The Production Guide
Martin Landau archives
Piri

This letter to Martin and Barbara is from Martin Landau's archives. It was written by producer Gerry Anderson and copies in director Charles Crichton who directed the episode Guardian Of Piri. It is not a typical Pinewood "inter office memo", but a private letter with a Group 3 Productions letterhead, and was probably not intended to be seen by the wider crew.

Martin Landau's script has strong criticism of the episode ("Mission Impossible to act!", "We aren't puppets. I'm fed up"). It seems that Gerry was similarly unhappy (or at least diplomatically agreed with his star).

The labs here were Rank Laboratories at the former Denham Film Studio, who processed the majority of British film. Whatever the problems were with the story, the episode has especially strong visuals and vivid colours, which would only be appreciated in the colour print.

5th September, 1974

Dear Martin and Barbara,

I mentioned to you that we were a little disappointed with "PIRI" and of course conveyed the same sentiments to Charles Crichton.

Reg Hill has now screened the first colour print at the laboratories and surprise, surprise, all the boys there thought that it was great and they're pretty tough critics so maybe I was wrong.

We'll screen the picture for you in the near future so that you can judge for yourselves.

GERRY

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